tongue ring out in high-sounding eulogistic measures once a year at least!
Then, moreover, there was a male quartette in the parish composed of such good singers as Gustaf and Jan Asker, of the old musical Askers, and the brothers Alfred and Tage Schullström, who kept a store down by the church. People were thankful to them whenever they sang; but for the singers themselves it must have been both stimulating and inspiring to sing at a grand affair where they had critical and discriminating hearers.
And the old man Asker, who played dance music at peasant weddings where nobody cared what came forth from the clarinet just so it had dash and rhythm—he must indeed have been glad to come to Mårbacka on a seventeenth of August! The young folk there appreciated his art, and told him there was no music in the world so easy to dance to as his.
Then, too, there was a brass sextette made up of Tage Schullström, Sergeant Johan Dalhgren, the Gårdsjö Inspector, a shop-clerk and two infant-school teachers. They had all invested in instruments and scores, and had rehearsed marches and waltzes, overtures and folk-songs. It would have been too bad not to have had one gala day, when their efforts were crowned by the award of triumph.
When, besides, among the relatives who spent their summers at Mårbacka there were two clever entertainers like Oriel Afzelius, husband of Fru Lagerlöf's
